To Ernst Haeckel   7 November 1868

Down. | Bromley. | Kent. S.E.

Nov 7. 1868.

My dear Häckel

I received yesterday mg your Schopfung Geschichte & I am very much obliged for it.1 I plainly see that I shall have to read the whole, but that as you know, will take me a long time. I have looked at one or two parts, & I see that, as usual, you have piled honours high on my head.

What an indomitable worker you are! & tell your wife2 from me with my kind compliments, if she will accept them, that she ought to scold you every day of your life, & not let you work so hard, for you will surely hurt yourself.

It is almost laughable the amount of work you get thro’ compared with what I can. I began an essay on the descent of Man & on Sexual selection (which latter subject I shall treat very fully) immediately when I finished my last book, & it will not be finished for another year, altho’ it will not be half as long as yours.3 I read with extreme interest your essay on Man in the popular Journal the name of which I forget, & it is quite curious how we take exactly the same view on many points, & if your essay were translated into English it wd make the publication of mine almost superfluous—4

Accept my cordial good wishes, do not work too hard, & believe me | yours most sincerely | Charles Darwin

LS

1
CD refers to Natürliche Schöpfungsgeschichte (Natural history of creation; Haeckel 1868c). CD’s annotated copy is in the Darwin Library–CUL (see Marginalia 1: 358–60).
3
Descent was published in 1871; CD’s ‘last book’ was Variation.
4
The reference is to ‘Ueber die Entstehung und den Stammbaum des Menschengeschlechts’, two lectures published in a series of collected lectures, Sammlung gemeinverständlicher wissenschaftlicher Vorträge (On the origin and family tree of the human race; collection of popular scientific lectures; Haeckel 1868b). CD’s annotated copy is in the Darwin Pamphlet Collection–CUL.

Please cite as “DCP-LETT-6450,” in Ɛpsilon: The Charles Darwin Collection accessed on 5 June 2025, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/dcp-data/letters/DCP-LETT-6450